Some Cook County residents crossing borders to avoid paying soda tax

Ted Slowik / Daily Southtown

Bill Watson, of Oak Forest, loads iced tea into the trunk of his car Tuesday at a Target store in the Will County portion of Tinley Park. Watson said he shops at the store to avoid paying Cook County's sweetened beverage tax.

Bill Watson, of Oak Forest, loads iced tea into the trunk of his car Tuesday at a Target store in the Will County portion of Tinley Park. Watson said he shops at the store to avoid paying Cook County's sweetened beverage tax. (Ted Slowik / Daily Southtown)

People are definitely unhappy about the soda tax. Those who can are going out of their way to avoid paying it.

It was easy to spot customers who were shopping in Will County to avoid Cook County taxes. For one thing, they all looked like smart people, with bright eyes and a purposeful spring in their steps.

Then there was the telltale clue that they exited the store with carts containing nothing but sweetened beverages.

I approached Watson because his cart contained six 12-packs of 16-ounce bottles of Lipton iced tea. I asked how much he saved by avoiding the Cook County tax. He pulled out his phone and used the calculator to do the math.

If he bought the same items in Cook County, he would have paid an additional $11.52 in tax, he said.

I talked with people who are now buying groceries outside Cook County to avoid the soda tax. But they aren't buying Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle's reasons for imposing the tax.

Preckwinkle's vote in November broke an 8-8 tie and created the tax. She said the extra revenue was needed to help fund health services. TV ads running this week and funded by $2 million from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg send the same message.

"When kids drink soda pop they're getting a lot more than they bargained for," the narrator says in the TV ads. The images show children standing in front of a vending machine. Instead of showing products, the buttons offer choices ranging from "kidney failure" and "heart disease" to "tooth decay" and "childhood obesity."

"The soda tax can make a difference, reducing the epidemic of childhood obesity and diabetes," the narrator says.

One big criticism of the soda tax that went into effect Aug. 2 is that it doesn't apply to many people Preckwinkle said it was intended to help. The Illinois Department of Revenue has said the tax cannot be applied to purchases made with food stamps.

The department announced the decision after the U.S. Department of Agriculture said that taxing participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, would jeopardize $87 million in annual funding the federal government provides to the state.

That means 872,000 low-income people are exempt from the tax.

That's a lot of kids whose parents are still buying soda and other "unhealthy" drinks. Those kids could be doomed to a future as obese diabetics, despite the best efforts of people like Preckwinkle and Bloomberg to save them.

"The people it's supposed to help aren't even paying," said John, of Worth, who declined to give his last name in the Target parking lot.

Meanwhile, guys like Watson have to drive a few miles out of their way just to stock up on iced tea.

I don't mean to make light of the nation's struggles with serious health issues. It's just that in my opinion, the Cook County beverage tax is wrong on so many levels.

I think it's disingenuous to say the tax is about improving health. If you believe that, then you probably believe red-light cameras are about improving safety at intersections.

I think both measures are money grabs, plain and simple.

I also think Cook County botched the rollout of the soda tax and created unnecessary confusion about what beverages are subject to the tax.

"I don't appreciate the mixed messages," McKeown told me.

The soda tax seems too excessive to be effective. It adds 68 cents to the cost of a 2-liter bottle of soda that retails for about a dollar.

People are still buying and drinking that unhealthy soda, including many food-stamp recipients in Cook County. A lot of Cook County residents are now spending their money in Will County and elsewhere.

While they're crossing borders to save money on soda, some are buying all their groceries there as well, depriving Cook of that additional sales tax revenue on other goods.

The tax has made Preckwinkle very unpopular. A poll released Thursday by We Ask America said 68 percent of Cook County voters disapprove of Preckwinkle's job performance and only 21 percent approve.

Some Cook County Board members are pushing to repeal the tax. Four Democratic commissioners have signed on as co-sponsors of a repeal ordinance filed by Sean Morrison, a Republican commissioner from Palos Park.

"A lot of the commissioners, we feel, may be in a different position on how they're going to look at this tax, especially now that we've seen it enacted," Morrison told CBS 2 Chicago. "There has just been a public outcry."

If the county board doesn't repeal the unpopular measure, the state Legislature may act to prevent other counties from taxing sweetened beverages based on weight or volume.

That's the gist of House Bill 4083, which has 29 co-sponsors, mostly Democrats.

"This tax greatly increases the cost of groceries and adds yet another tax burden to local families," state Rep. Marty Moylan, a Democrat from Des Plaines, said in a statement, Bloomberg BNA reported Tuesday.

"Even more concerning is that this tax will hurt local businesses and jeopardize jobs in our community by pushing residents to shop outside of Cook County."

Retailers oppose the tax, and several lawsuits have been filed over how the tax was implemented.

I think Cook County should repeal its soda tax. Rather than look for other ways to raise revenue, I'd like to see the county identify ways to cut costs in its $4.4 billion annual operating budget.